Becoming a US Citizen Is About To Get a Lot Harder.

The incoming Trump Administration is about to make it a lot harder to become a U.S. citizen.

It's About To Get Harder

In 2019, a survey was conducted with 110 different naturalization providers, and together they reported more than 20 barriers that the Trump administration instituted in order to prevent green card holders from becoming a U.S. citizen. And it is safe to say that we can expect these obstacles to return once he is back in office.

So today I'm going to cover the major ways through which the Trump administration is going to try to prevent you from becoming a U.S. citizen. And as an added bonus, I will explain to you how to prepare your citizenship case so that it does not get denied. I also have some good news to share with you at the end.

Barriers We Can Expect

Okay, so what will be some of the biggest barriers to becoming a citizen once Trump is back in office? The first is what we call extreme vetting.

This means doing things like:

-Increasing the length of citizenship interviews

-Doing more in-depth screening at every stage of your case

-Looking deeper into your criminal history or your good moral character history

-Asking for more information on the N-400

-Sending more requests for evidence

USCIS will basically start with the presumption that you have committed fraud and then do everything that they can in order to find it. They might ask you for police records for crimes that you committed more than five years ago or provide even up to a decade of international travel history.

They might ask for more detailed lists of every single place that you've lived in, along with police clearance letters for each. And if you don't make much money, they may ask you for more details about your income and taxes. In fact, additional proof of taxes was one of the most common requests for evidence that USCIS gave out during the Trump administration the first time around.

That was followed by additional requests for proof of your physical presence, details about your marriage and child support, and criminal history, all of which may have the potential to disqualify you from becoming naturalized.

To give you an idea of how ridiculous this extreme vetting became during the Trump administration, it wasn't unheard of for some immigration officers to deny applications for the N-400 for persons who failed to file changes of a trust within 10 days of moving. Technically, this can disqualify you from becoming a citizen underneath the current rules, and Trump's administration was happy to use it.

The next major barrier that you might see is going to be an increase in filing fees. If you think that the current filing fee of $760 is a lot, just wait until it jumps to $1,000 or more. In 2016, the Trump administration increased the filing fee for citizenship by 81%, from $640 to $1,160.

Not only that, they tried to make it more difficult to qualify for fee waivers by eliminating the reduced fee option for incomes between 150% and 200% of the federal poverty level. For those who don't know, the high cost of naturalization is one of the biggest reasons why people fail to apply and remain green card holders. And there are currently around 9 million residents who are eligible to apply for naturalization but have yet to do so.

Okay, the next major barrier that you can expect the Trump administration to put in your way is going to be increased processing times. Currently, it takes an average of 5 to 6 months to become a citizen, but during the Trump administration, this doubles to 8 to 9 months. And in some places like Seattle and Miami, the delay was up to 2 years.

There were a lot of reasons for this, including:

-Trump's extreme vetting which made every case take even longer

-The requirement to do in-person interviews for other types of cases, which pulled precious time slots away from USCIS officers

-Separating family applications rather than processing them together

Naturalization cases also started to take longer because USCIS began to take longer to send out interview notices, or send them to the wrong address. And once people showed up for interviews, the timeframe for each interview was averaging 45 to 60 minutes, which is double the typical timeframe.

As a result, by the end of the first Trump administration, there was a backlog of more than 700,000 naturalization cases, which would've kept growing had he not been voted out of office.

The next major obstacle that you might expect is a more difficult naturalization exam. In 2020, the Trump administration tried to change the 2008 version to a new naturalization civics test that would've been much more difficult to pass. Currently, the test requires that you answer 6 out of 10 questions correctly.

In 2020, they tried to make the change to have persons answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly instead, which would definitely make this test much more difficult for the majority of persons. They also tried to increase the base of questions from 100 to 128, which would require persons to study even more questions.

The English test became more difficult as well, with reports of officers asking applicants to define difficult words such as genocide, terrorism, communism, which admittedly, if an applicant could not define correctly, some officers would use this as a reason to deny that the applicant could speak proper English.

And officers would sometimes try to stump applicants by framing questions in a negative manner such as "Why haven't you voted?" instead of "Have you ever voted?" or "Why have you traveled?" instead of "Have you ever traveled?"

And some officers also started to ask questions that were technically outside of the scope of naturalization, such as questions about:

-A person's previous immigration journey as an asylee or for past divorces

-Past marriages

-Payment methods of green cards

-Money sent to relatives abroad

And of course, answering the wrong way could cause a person's application to get denied.

What Can You Do?

So now that you have a better understanding of what the Trump administration tried to do the last time around to create even more obstacles to naturalization, what can you do in order to protect your case this time around? The biggest piece of advice is to apply now if you qualify.

Current processing times are still relatively quick, and should the Trump administration try to implement these obstacles a second time, it will still take time. So get your application in now so that it can get processed with our relatively quick processing times these days. But if you do not yet qualify and you'll be forced to apply later once certain obstacles have been put in place, here are some of the things that you can consider.

First, submit a FOIA request to get copies of all of your immigration documents. Use these records to double check every inch of your application before you submit it. Make sure details such as travel history, marriage details, divorce details, criminal records are all consistent with past applications.

You also want to make sure you avoid going abroad for longer than six months on any one trip out of the US, which could most certainly cause you to get denied. In addition, make sure that you maintain a clean criminal record, and make sure you pay all major fees and minor fees. Keep proof of payments in case this is requested.

Next, gather any evidence of good moral character, including community service, employment history, and filing your taxes on time. Especially, make sure that your taxes are filed correctly and that you do not owe any back taxes. Document everything that you send to USCIS and keep a copy, including copies of all supporting evidence that you provide, and your receipts that you receive.

Take plenty of time to study English and to study for the civics exam. Make sure you study updated study materials whenever possible. You can go directly to the USCIS website to obtain a copy of the test guide. Constantly monitor your case to see if a request for evidence hasn't been sent out or if an interview notice hasn't been sent out so that you do not lose notices of these. And stay up to date on all the latest policy by monitoring USCIS.gov.

And one easy way that you can stay on top of the news is to subscribe to my channel. I'll make sure that I cover any changes that happen with the N-400 as it occurs. And I'll continue to keep you updated about changes instituted by the Trump administration.

If you have anything in your history, including criminal history, even if it was a long time ago or dismissed, make sure that you consult with an immigration attorney and get their help to follow your case as well as to represent you during the interview. The stakes will simply be too high if you try to do these things yourself.

Now finally, as promised, some good news.

Despite all of these things that the Trump administration tried to do to prevent persons from naturalizing, USCIS still had an average approval rating of 89% and 92% during his presidency, which is still the same average that we saw of approvals from before he took office. So please don't let news, policy changes, or scary stories scare you from applying for your rights.

If you're smart, organized, well-prepared, and have excellent legal representation, you should be fine. However, once you become a citizen, your immigration journey may not be over. Trump's policy advisor recently tweeted turbocharging the denaturalization project. That means that they may try to take away citizenship from persons who were not born in this country.

I'll explain to you whether or not you need to worry in my latest video. Click to watch this video next and I'll see you there.